AutoHotkey Community

I'm looking for a free text editor. What's your favorite free text editor?

The four free ones I've found mentioned on this board so far are:
Notepad++
Note Tab Light
Crimson Edit
PSPad

I've not tried any of the four above yet. If you have tried them, please comment. Which one is the most powerful? Which ones crash?

Please don't mention PURCHASED text editors like Ultra Edit except to compare them with the free ones. I'm not in the market for a purchased text editor at this time.

Thanks!

i am ok with notepad2
what i need most when editing scripts is:
1. line numbers at the side
2. when i use { [ (, it will display the closing end )]} in different colors
3. hotkey to execute script immediately without double clicking the icon (Ctrl+L)
4. user friendly to use replace, find

Confirmed. Your points are exactly mine. Additionaly I'd point out that N2 is a single executable. More portable - isn't possible

Does it have:
- Erase to end of line.
- Erase next or previous word.
- Highlight, drag & drop text.
- Indent
- Spell checker (just wondering)

Thanks

It has [this]

Notepad++ is my personal favorite. It at least has the last three features you mentioned, I'm not sure about the others.

_________________
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit,
and on the slitted sheet I sit. ;~}

My favourite editor (free) is ConTEXT.
Yep
Check
Yes and it can also capture Autohotkey's debug output and show it in the text editor, then automatically just to the line with the error.
Check. Also possible: find/replace in all open files and using RegEx!
Yep
Yes, but isn't that a standard feature of Windows? (using Ctrl+Backspace and Ctrl+Del)?:?
Eh... yes, but what's so special about this?
Check: auto indent using a fixed width for every tab or smart tabs. Also possible: automatically convert tabs into spaces... I hate the "TAB"-character!
Nope, I don't think so...

Other features I like are for example: custom hotkeys (four different ones can be specified for every file extension), custom highlighters, code templates, automatically go to the help-file when you press F1, light-weight, project manager, capturing console output, macro recorder and file comparison.

Website: (Click on "Features" for more) http://www.contexteditor.org/

_________________
Printing css/html-formatted text

NoteTab is the one I use.

-line numbers
-regex (any disk file or recursive folders with *.filter option) single file, open file or all open files)
- built in calculator
- customisable interface
- It has built in clip functionnality (its own language, similar to Autohotkey but not as powerfull obviously)
- HTML syntax highlighting (Only)
- match bracket (not color coded though)

theres so many options in this editor its rediculous.
at first its plain but you notice the power compensates

you can write your own script built in to replace end of line chars or replace text with something else.

you can also make your own built in input boxes with drop downs that prepopulate your text

anyhow.. list goes on and on and on.. it used to be 20$ US for the pro version not its 30$ there is a free version with all these features except I think the line numbers go away after 30 days and the spell checker is not available in the free version.

I wrote a huge help file for people at my work since we all use it now. If anyone is interested on using notetab I can post my help file somewhere.
Its got tips and tricks mostly.

The documentation is really good as well for its built in clip editor (like Autohotkey)

http://www.notetab.com

_________________
-=Raz=-

My personal favorite is Syn. It has everything you're looking for, it's quick to open, does syntax highlighting of everything i've ever tried, has awesome find replace with regex support.

Definately a good editor.

syn, good
but also bad.
AFAIK, it doesn't support AHK (or autoit) syntaxes....and you cant add without editing the source and re-compiling it...

_________________
rawr. be very afraid
*poke*
Note: My name is all lowercase for a reason.
"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault, Bigfoot is blurry. So there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside."

Scite - http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

Quite a nice, simple, quick and easy text editor.

I personally like the Crimson Editor.

It is quite old, i use a version from 2004,
and it has not as much features as some newer editors.
But it has a funny bunny as icon, and that is worth a lot!

Of course it has a lot of features mentioned already, too:

- AHK-syntax highlighting
- line numbers at the side (only if you want)
- bracket-match highlighting is done via under-lining not via color.
- hotkey to execute script immediately without double clicking the icon(It is Ctrl-1 at my computer, and only one of many user-defined actions)
- user friendly to use replace, find (at least in my opinion)
- Erase to end of line.
- Erase next or previous word.
- Highlight, drag & drop text.
- Indent
- regex (any disk file or recursive folders with *.filter option) single file, open file or all open files)
- Spell Checker

Additionally it has

- In-text boookmarks (the poor man code folding )
- built-in macro-recorder
- a "Column-Mode" for easy cut&paste with text organized in columns, like .csv
- Project management
- FTP-support

http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

- Erase next or previous word.
Ctrl+backspace and Ctrl+Del do not work in standard Windows Notepad.

- Highlight, drag & drop text:
This feature is not in standard Windows Notepad.

Thanks,
Skyglider

Thanks all for your contributions so far.
Some info I found while researching text editors.
Star (user) rating and number of downloads is per download.com.


Notepad++: ****+ (298,378 downloads)
PROS:
- Brace and indent hightlighting. (Puts colored vertical line in left margin from open brace to close brace.)
- Macro (Says "You can save several macros and ....". Does several mean only a few macros?)
CON?
- Spell checking via aspell plugin. **Is this hard to set up?**


Note Tab Light: ****+ (314,373 downloads)
** Eliminated from my selection list because **
- Has pay for versions so light version is missing some features like print preview.


Crimson Editor: ****+ (410,117 downloads)
PROS:
- Unlimited undo and redo buffers.
- Column editor (Copy and paste rectangular sections.)
- Spell Checker Built-in (100,000 words base. User can add words.)
- Macro (Maybe easier to record than doing it in AHK?)


PSPad Editor: ****+ (24,000 downloads)
PROS:
- Matching bracket highlighting.
- Spell Checker
- Full Hex Editor (Not sure I need this now but was useful when I used to code in "C".)


Notepad2: ***+ (17,910 downloads)
PROS:
- Auto indentation
- Bracket matching
- Multiple undo/redo
- Rectangular block selection

Above is just a very quick list, before I found the following:
While searching for above info, I stumbled on a Wikipedia comparison of text editors. This is a goldmine of information to compare text editors. Here's a link to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors

Gotta do some work so stopping here. So above not complete but offers my thoughts up to now.
Skyglider

my personal favorite is Notepad++, but for some reason I always end up back with notepad.exe